A home gateway links an access network outside of a family to a network inside the family and manages a home area network by hiding complex network configuration from a user.
With an increase in home area network applications, home applications and digital services available for home users are also increasing. The home area network becomes a highly dynamic environment, and a home area network device may access the home area network by using a wired network or a wireless network at any time. When the home area network device accesses the home area network, a home gateway corresponding to the home area network receives an uplink data packet sent by the home area network device, and directly forwards the uplink data packet to the Internet by using a physical line; or the home gateway receives a downlink data packet sent by the Internet by using the physical line and then forwards the downlink data packet to the home area network device.
Because an addition of a physical line costs lots of manpower and material resources, transmission bandwidth between the home gateway and the Internet is restricted by the physical line and is difficult to improve, and transmission efficiency is low.